Mobile sensing, command, and weapons platforms, generically referred to as mobile communications nodes, commonly share Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) data and/or tactical data across directional wireless communications networks. These networks are generally not directly managed by data exchange applications interacting with the physical, data link, or network layers. Instead, an autonomous management service is used to optimize the network link topology and routing of application data traffic in order to efficiently allocate available network resources among uncoordinated application traffic flows. As the number of mobile communications nodes increases, the number of potential link configurations, the number of potential routes, and the volume of application data traffic shared in mobile-to-mobile, mobile-to-fixed, and fixed-to-mobile inter-nodal communications also increase, potentially taxing the computational resources of the management service and compromising its ability to generate optimal or near-optimal link topology policies and routes within usefully short periods of time. If the management service becomes overwhelmed, the ability of the network to service application traffic flows can become degraded as the configuration and allocation of network resources can become misaligned with current demands upon the directional wireless network.
Prior art management services and optimization frameworks tend to deterministically work through a link topology solution space, so that as the complexity of the optimization problem increases, computational resource limitations prevent the management service from generating optimized link topology policies and routes in real or near-real time. On the other hand, prior art management services and optimization frameworks which employ time-limited, randomized searches within a link topology solution space do not reliably generate optimized link topology policies that are capable of supporting traffic flows with particularized network demands, such as bandwidth requirements, jitter requirements, and delay requirements, when restricted to real or near-real time searches.
The changing spatial relationships between mobile communications nodes, fixed communications nodes, and obstructions (such as terrain) in directional wireless communications networks requires that management services dynamically plan and configure at least the network link topology based upon varying resource requests, varying physical layer constraints, and varying mission criteria which create additional constraints with respect to network resources and demand. Accordingly, scientists and engineers continue to seek improved topology management systems for wireless communications networks, and particularly directional wireless networks involving mobile communications nodes.